November 7, 2015

Holiday Mega Box = Chrome Update Packs

The other day, while once again perusing the card aisle at the local Target, I stumbled upon one of the Holiday Mega Boxes of Topps Update.

The big draw of these things are the two exclusive Update Chrome packs that mingle among five regular update packs.

I'll get to the contents of these in a few. Once again, I had my two year old with me and I asked her to pick between the two boxes. Let's see how she did this time.

I'm trying to build the base set and I came away with a good number to help me with that goal. In case it doesn't come across in the scan, that Bryant is of the rainbow foil variety. I also happened to pull a former Durham Bull that got to play in the All-Star game this season in that Boxberger. I thought I'd tack the Joey Butler I pulled from one of the Chrome packs since he too spent a good bit of time with the Bulls. I was blown away when I saw the printing on those Chromes. For a split second, I thought it was just a parallel, but the entire set is done in that 'bubble refractor' finish.

Bouncing back to the regular packs, the Syndergaard is the only base card I scanned. Those last two inserts are some pretty popular guys too. I did way better than I thought in the base packs. It's a good thing that I did too, I didn't pull anything Earth shattering in the Chrome packs. The Posey is up,for grabs if anyone needs it. It's really nice that the insert set is done in the same refractor pattern(though it's hard to tell in the scan), but I'm going to focus on just chasing down Jeter. That being said, the base cards are really nice. I'm going to have to do my best to chase the 50 card set. I'm happy my daughter picked a great box, but if I had known that the set was going to have been so nice, I would have grabbed both boxes while I had the chance.

While on the same errand running outing, I had to make a stop at Walmart as well. I took that chance to look for another blaster to bust(since I'm also chasing the Walmart exclusive throwback variations). They had a bunch on the shelf and it had my daughter point out which one we should get. She picked and we were on our way home. I opened the blaster after the mega box from above, so I knew my little girl was 2 for 2 in picking great boxes for us. I was hoping that once I cracked the blaster, she'd still be batting 1.000!

Once again, I pulled a good number that were set needs, but I didn't scan any base cards from the blaster. I was pretty happy with the two gold parallels, Ramirez was pretty decent for the Rays and King Felix continues to be pretty great for the M's. The Tazawa was a needed throwback. I've decided to put together that retail only All-Star set too and both Gray and Donaldson helped put me a total of three cards closer to that goal on the day. If I wasn't going to pull the Jeter Rookie Sensations, Jackie Robinson is a pretty darn good alternative to pull. At this point, the blaster was already pretty decent. As stated previously, I always leave the medallion pack for last.

Another Trout insert, another good pull. I'm digging the Springer throwback card. It's one of the better photos from the set that I've seen in person thus far. The Donaldson was the first card of the blaster to beat the odds. The snow camo parallels fall one in every 86 packs. I thought that was the icing on the box...until I picked up the pack that I thought would have the medallion card. For the second blaster in a row,the pack was way too light to contain one of the manu-relics. I opened it, flipped it over, and was amazed by that incredible Mr. Cub relic with that nice stripe running through it. It's #/99 and really beat the odds. The standard 1st Home Run relics fall one in every 28 blasters. A quick glance at the checklist and I can definitely say that I was fortunate enough to pull one of the top five players available. So there you have it. My daughter will be picking all of my retail box and pack purchases for e foreseeable future. She's made the choices that have led to some of the best retail pulls of my entire collecting career.